Although, Florio says that the Vikings will still likely proceed with caution in regards to Bridgewater’s return.

This could be an interesting situation to watch, given that Sam Bradford has missed two games with a bone bruise and knee trouble. Case Keenum was great in Bradford’s absence on Sunday, but it will be interesting to see what the team elects to do with Bridgewater when healthy.

Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reported last week that Bridgewater expects to return from his knee injury at some point during the season. According to Rapoport, that the question is whether the Vikings will activate him from the PUP list or not.

Bridgewater is out for at least the first six games of the season after the Vikings placed him on the reserve/PUP list. He will be re-evaluated in October and can be activated from the list at that point.

Bridgewater is in the final year of his contract and could be an unrestricted free agent in 2018, depending on whether he’s able to play or not at some point during the 2017 season.

Bridgewater, 24, is a former first-round pick of the Vikings back in 2014. He’s currently in the final year of his four-year, $6,849,502 rookie contract and stands to make a base salary of $1,354,023 for the 2017 season.

The Vikings declined to pick up Bridgewater’s fifth-year option that would have cost them $12,198,000 million for the 2018 season, but was guaranteed only for injury and wouldn’t have prevented them from working on a long-term extension over the next year.

In 2015, Bridgewater appeared in all 16 games for the Vikings and threw for 3,231 yards while completing 65.3 percent of his passes to go along with 14 touchdowns and nine interceptions.